As far as the cost to overseas players purchasing zen, I posted this elsewhere and I am happy enough (and have been although I was initially annoyed at having to pay in euro rather than USD as i did when i first started over 3 years ago)

The last time i bought zen at the beginning of June I got the 5000 zen bundle (which gave me 300 extra zen and so for STO would give me 4240 c points for my cash)

EU law only requires that the standard VAT rate must be at least 15% and the reduced rate at least 5% so my roundings may have given me the 14% rather than 15%.

This vat or purchase tax was formerly absorbed by PWE for many years, however they were pulled up for it i believe when they wanted to open their European servers and for european customers had to pass on the VAT charge. I don't believe US customers have this extra tax.

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As I showed in my earlier post we seem to be paying between 14 and 15% TAX by paying in EURO against purchasing with USD directly. This is pretty much in line with EU legislation that minimum VAT for member states is 15%. The fluctuation is probably due to the fact that the USD to EUR conversion done by PWE in setting the 45 EUR price for 5000 zen is static while the actual EUR to GBP rate fluctuates (and has dropped 10% in the last year according to European Central Bank (ECB) (Source: http://www.ecb.int/stats/exchange/eu...ph-gbp.en.html)

If we consider that the 45 EUR price is 39.13 EUR PLUS 5.87 EUR (15% VAT) then this gives the exchange rate used at the time as 50/39.13 = approximately 1.28 USD : 1 EUR

so if PWE were to recalculate the EUR price even annually then the current price should be 50/1.25 = 40 EUR plus 40 @ 15% VAT = 6 EUR so the cost now would be 46 EUR for 5000 zen. not a big change. BUT.

If they had done this the same time last year however, the rate was 1.44 USD : 1 EUR so 50/1.44 = 34.72 EUR plus 34.72 @ 15 % = 5.21 EUR so the cost for the last year should have been 39.93 EUR, call it 40 EUR for simplicity sake, a saving for european customers of 5 EUR per purchase.

Should PWE review the EUR cost at least annually? Damn right they should (I would prefer quarterly but annually is at least a start). Will they? I doubt it but perhaps PWEBranflakes can highlight this concern to the accounts department as while PWE made extra money last year from it's EU customers than it rightly should have, if the EUR continues to weaken against the dollar the company will start losing money to it's EU customers..

.. damn maybe we shouldnt do anything or euro zone folks and brits will be worse off?[/color]

But my post is about the difference between the prices listed when you buy Zen through Steam Wallet, and when you buy Zen through Zen billing page. At first I thought it was a general price increase but now I think that it is simply a mistake.